Memory : Factors Effecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety Flashcards
Define Anxiety.
Anxiety refers to an emotionally aroused state of distress and uneasiness
Why do eyewitness testimony researchers study anxiety?
Researchers interested in EWT study anxiety as it is associated with witnessing crime, researchers have examined its effects on the accuracy of EWT.
Explain what the Yerkes - Dodson law implies for the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
- Some researchers have claimed that the Yerkes - Dodson law means that anxiety has an impaired effect on the accuracy of EWT.
- The Yerkes - Dodson law describes the effect of emotional arousal (stress) on performance up to a point, but after this there are detrimental impacts on cognitive functions such as memory.
- The implication of Yerkes - Dodson law for the effect of anxiety on EWT is it would impair memory and reduce the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
Explain what the weapons focus effect implies for the effect of anxiety on EWT.
- A related way in which anxiety can impair the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is through the weapons focus effect. The weapons focus effect refers to situations when eye witnesses to crimes involving weapons focuses their attention on the weapon, and subsequently fails to remember other details of the crime.
- according to the arousal/threat hypothesis, when eye witnesses, see a weapon, this causes a state of anxiety that leads them to focus their attention on the weapon, and so miss peripheral details, like the identity of the perpetrator.
What research support for the claim that anxiety can impair the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is there?
For example, in Johnson and Scotts (1976) experiment, participants were found to have better memories of confederates’ appearance when they exited the scene of a staged argument carrying a pen rather than a bloody knife. These findings suggest that anxiety impairs the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as the bloody knife presumably induced greater feelings of anxiety than a pen, and this high level of anxiety caused an impairment in their memory. This is exactly what is predicted by the Yerkes - Dodson law, which suggests that a highly arousing state would impair performance on a memory task. Moreover, this study also provides support for the weapons focus effect, as we would expect that the participants observing the confederates with the knife would experience greater anxiety and so focus their attention on the knife rather than confederates appearance, as predicted by threat hypothesis.
Why is a limitation of the research into the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony its lack of ecological validity?
Studying the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony is challenging as research ethics constrain researchers from placing participants in high anxiety situations. Consequently, most research relies on participants watching laboratory setting video footage of a crime or witnessing a staged crime (like in the Jonson and Scott experiment). It is difficult for these artificial tasks to capture the true nature of the anxiety experienced by eyewitnesses to a crime. In a real eyewitness situation, participants would experience strong emotions and without these it may be difficult to generalise from laboratory research to real life eyewitness situations. Thus we must be cautious with our research as to what it tells us about the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
Why have some researchers challenged the claim that the weapons focus effect relates to anxiety?
They claim the effect may be due more to surprise at an unusual situation. Since weapons are unusual, people focus their attention on weapons rather than more usual things, like a persons face. If true, this claim would suggest the weapons focus effect isn’t actually caused by anxiety at all, meaning this finding challenges the threat hypothesis, suggesting weapons cause anxiety and lower the accuracy of EWT. This was demonstrated in an experiment where Pickel (1998) shower participants a video in which a confederate walked into a hair salon, holding either a pair of scissors (low anxiety/ not unusual), a handgun (high anxiety/ unusual) or raw chicken (low anxiety/ unusual). The participants were equally bad at identifying the confederate in the chicken and handgun conditions, suggesting it was the unusualness of the item that affected the accuracy of their EWT rather than anxiety. Thus, although EWT may be negatively affected by the presence of a weapon, this may not be linked to anxiety.
